Universal Studios Mutants

Enough time has passed since Airing Of The Grievances Day, so it guess it's okay to gloat about our presents.

We gamers know a thing about treasure hoards and mountains of loot, and my absolutely favorite haul came in the Christmas of 1981.  That was the year the glorious Sears Wish Book catalog and my ornery ol' Nana (who found all my childhood interests distasteful and disturbing, if not outright Satanic-with-a-capital-S) joined forces to bring me The Greatest Toys Of All Time:

The Remco Universal Mini-Monsters...and Their Dream House!

To this day, I'm still unsure how she rationalized buying those for me (aside from me being a generally awesome grandson, I mean.)

1982's Xmas score was pretty snazzy, too, because that was the year Remco released glow-in-the-dark versions of the very same 1981 figures.  I only received 3 of the 6 (The Creature, The Mummy, and Frankenstein's Monster) in my stocking, but that was okay, because I pretended they were the Evil Duplicate versions of the Real Deals.

1982 Wish Book "Glow Versions" Advert

Those glow-clones (glones?) caused all kinds of trouble in my action figure wonderland. Perhaps their most dastardly crime was unleashing RODAN HIMSELF against the Death Star, requiring the "good" monsters to team up with a random Cylon and Ovion to stop the rampage.  (I think a carjacked Landspeeder may have been involved, too.)

Send In The Glones

The point of all the above was to indicate that the Universal Monsters Pantheon and Christmas go together for me like eggnog and cinnamon...like Santa and chimneys...like mummies and tana leaves.

So I'm overjoyed to share my Secret Santicore 2012 present by the awesome Hudson Bell. He doesn't know me from Adam (neither Baron Frankenstein's version, nor Yahweh's), but he definitely made my Christmas very, very awesome.

Just click the link to see his dandy interpretations of post-apocalyptic classic movie monsters.

Thanks, Mr. Bell!